Teaching Resource

After the Civil War, African Americans were under attack as they struggled for equal rights in America. Laws were put in place during Reconstruction to assure Freedmen basic civil rights. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments gave former slaves freedom, citizenship, equal privileges in each state under federal law, and the right to vote.

Many southern states made their own laws in order to block the equal treatment of African Americans. Poll taxes, black codes, and Jim Crow laws are...